The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith Page A

looked up sharply, as did he, and they saw that the sky in the east had darkened slightly; the storm was as yet only a promise, but it might well come their way. She smiled at him, and he at her, as they were united in their relief that at last there was a sign of the rain that the country so thirsted for.

CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE’S AT THE CONTROLS NOW, NOT YOU
    I F THERE HAD BEEN DRAMA for Mma Ramotswe that day, then the same was true, she discovered, for Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Fanwell, the young mechanic, had lowered a car onto his foot, with the result that he’d had to be rushed to the emergency department at the Princess Marina Hospital.
    “I warned him and warned him,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni as he came into the kitchen on his return from work. “I warned him, Mma Ramotswe. You probably even heard me—many, many times.”
    She nodded; she had heard him. He had a special voice for the issuing of warnings—the sort of voice that ministers sometimes used in church when they had something special to say. It was a voice that you felt you had to listen to—or you ignored at your peril.
    “I’ve said it so many times,” he continued. “You’d think they would remember.
When you’re lowering anything—anything at all—always, always, always look at what you’re lowering it onto.
Doesn’t that make sense? Isn’t it the sort of thing your great guru tells you in that book of his?”
    “Clovis Andersen?
The Principles of Private Detection
?”
    “Yes, that book.”
    Mma Ramotswe could tell that he was angry, which was an unusual state for him. Normally Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was the most equable-tempered of men, but now there was a note of frustration in his voice.
    “I know he’s more careful than Charlie ever was,” he continued. “He’s in a different class altogether. But you’d think that he’d have more sense, you really would.”
    “He’s still young,” said Mma Ramotswe soothingly. “We have to remind ourselves of what we were like when we were Fanwell’s age.”
    Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni made a visible effort to calm down. Mma Ramotswe always managed to put things into perspective. “Everything could always be worse,” she would say, “and so be grateful that things are only as bad as they are.” She was right; of course she was right. Fanwell could have been lying under the car and had the breath crushed out of him.
    “What exactly happened?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
    Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. “We had a car up on a pneumatic jack. He’d been doing something to the suspension. When he’d finished that, he began to lower the car, but didn’t notice where his right foot was—directly below one of the front wheels. When it came to the last few inches, he let all the pressure out at once so that the car more or less fell that last little bit—onto his foot.”
    Mma Ramotswe winced. “Ow!”
    “Ow indeed, Mma. He was yelling his head off. I thought he’d cut off a hand, or something like that. Mma Makutsi heard him too and came out of the office to see what was going on. We got the car up off his foot, but he was still howling. He said his foot was broken.”
    “Well, the weight of a car…”
    “Oh, I know that. But when they X-rayed him at the hospital, they said only a tiny, tiny bone was broken. Nothing else. They didn’t even put a plaster on.”
    “I don’t think they have to do that for a tiny bone.”
    “No, that’s what the doctor said. She said that he would get better but that he should be careful not to use his foot too much. She gave him a strong painkiller.”
    “And now he’s all right?”
    Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “He seems fine. But we had a long wait at the hospital. Four hours. I couldn’t really leave him there by himself.”
    Mma Ramotswe looked thoughtful. “You say Mma Makutsi went with you?”
    “Yes, she was very good. She even held his hand while they were waiting for the X-ray.”
    Mma Ramotswe asked her question casually. “Did she speak